South Asia Citizens Web

Full text of the statement by New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI) on 10 May 2014 regarding violence in Assam

Sites for high level radioactive wastes sites should be geologically stable, of very low population density, ground water etc. Sites are selected after decade long studies, discussions and consultations. None of these in India. Here a few technocrats sit in a closed room and decide the site. The site chosen is in the districts of Idukki-Theni in Kerala/Tamil Nadu. The site is tectonically active, water capital for 20 million people and is part of the UNESCO heritage site.

Orlando Woods’s dissertation interprets the politics of evangelical Christian growth in Sri Lanka by framing proselytization via a religious economy. Situating his study with the rise of a Buddhist political elite after the 1980s, Woods states that the “moral impetus” for the dissertation is his “belief in the freedom of religious choice” over and against the Sri Lankan state’s attempts to restrict evangelical conversions, even while problematizing some of the coercive proselytization tactics used by evangelicals under the state’s radar (p. 3).

As the momentum of India’s nine-phase Lok Sabha election shifts in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s opponents, a new bunch of writers and social scientists have risen to defend its Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. Some of them see virtue and talent, indeed even poetic genius, in a man who presided over the mass butchery of Muslims in Gujarat. (One of them compares Mr Modi’s ghastly poetry with Kabir’s!)

Neelanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of a much discussed book on Modi, made few interesting observations about AAP’s (Aam Aadmi Party ) foray into electoral politics of Gujarat. Underlining the fact that Kejriwal’s entry into the state - wherein he tried to put the government on the mat for its acts of omission and commission - did raise expectations, he maintains that the momentum did peter away slowly. What is more important to note that when the electoral battle started the party did not field a single candidate from the minority community despite the fact that population of Muslims in Gujarat is more than nine percent.